Hospitals in Canada.

  • Canada. Department of National Health and Welfare.
Date:
1955
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hospitals in Canada. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    aria 1. Hospital Bed Facilities(2) Hospital beds of all types, including beds in mental hospitals and tuberculosis sanatoria, number 169,922 at the end of 1953, enough to accommodate 1.2 percent of the Canadian population on any particular day. This total is the product of tremendous expansion in recent years, illustrated | below in Chart 1. Altogether, hospital beds increased by 36,517 or 27 percent from the 133,405 beds set up for use in 1946, as shown in Table 1. The growth of population over the same period has been somewhat less - an increment of about 20 percent. Consequently, the number of beds per pith x. population has risen from 10.9 in 1946 to 11.5 in 1953. “ Study of hospital construction assisted by the federal-provincial Hospital Construction Grant introduced in 1948,(3) shows that the number of hospital beds is continu- ing to increase. As indicated in Table 2, a total of 54,232 patient beds pag been approved for construction up to Decem- ber 31, 1954, of which about 38,000 had been completed at that time. By adding 6,485 beds completed during 1954 and 16,269 beds under construction or planned at the end of 1954 to the 170,000 beds existing at the end of 1953, and by al- lowing for 10 percent of new construction to replace obsoles- cent beds, it may be estimated that hospital beds will number about 190,000 when currently planned construction has been completed, (1) The following section describes existing hospital bed facilities of all types. Acute general and special hospital beds and bed requirements (exclusive of Federal hospitals) are discussed later in Section 5 of this report. Chronic and convalescent beds and bed require= ments are discussed in Section 6. Federal hospital bed facilities are set out in Section 7. (2) With the exception of beds constructed under the Hospital Construction Grant, the hospital beds discussed in this section refer to the actual number of beds set up for use, sometimes termed the bed complement. This differs from rated bed capacity which represents the number of beds a hospital is designed to accommodate based on minimum standards of floor space per bed. Rated bed capacity is discussed further in Section 5 of this report. (3) The provisions of the Hospital Construction Grant Program are set out in Section 9 of this report. (4) In addition to the 54,232 patient beds for adults and children, 6,648 bassinets and 8,084 nurses! beds had been approved for construction under the. grant up to December 31, 1954.